Ancestry.com Launches New Homepage

The following announcement was written by The Generations Network, the parent company of Ancestry.com:

Ancestry.com today launched a brand-new homepage that logged-in members will see the next time they visit the site. This new page combines the best of the old homepage with all of the personalized features and tools formerly in the MyAncestry tab. The result is quick, central access to the resources each member searches most.

• Family Tree Access – Surveys and site analysis told us that the 5 million Ancestry members building their family trees on Ancestry.com want quick access to their trees (particularly the pedigree view). We updated the homepage’s link to the family tree, added thumbnails of images uploaded to the trees, and included summaries and quick access-points to the tree. Multiple family trees can be viewed from the “My Trees” link.
• Quick Links – In the “My Quick Links” section, members can add personalized Web links to any page on Ancestry.com – or to any page anywhere on the Internet. This allows quick, instant access to resources each researcher uses most frequently: message boards, census records, or specific collections and databases.
• What’s New – Surveys also showed that Ancestry researchers want information on new records and features added to the site. We created the new “What’s Happening at Ancestry” section to meet this need. The “New records on Ancestry.com” list is dynamically updated every time new records are added to Ancestry.com.
• Organize Research – To help members keep their research organized, we also added the Shoebox, Recent Activity, and a new To-Do list to the new homepage.

Combining the old homepage and the MyAncestry page into a single page reduces the number of clicks it takes researchers to access the features they use most. As part of this combination, there is no longer a separate “My Ancestry” tab. All of the tools and features from the My Ancestry page are now on the new homepage.

Learn more about the new homepage at www.ancestry.com/home/lihp/faq.aspx. We welcome feedback, thoughts and ideas on the new homepage (which can be submitted through the link above).

Comments

[Amelia]

A problem that I ran into right away, is that the family tree box is huge and right in the main space of the screen. I don't post my family tree on Ancestry.com but I am on a list for a cousin's tree. There needs to be a way to minimize that box or have an option where you can choose where to put it or what size you want it.... something like that. In addition to that, there is a button to click to "Tell us what you think" right in the main box telling about the new home page. You would think it would be a place for feedback on the new look, but it is just a general survey about Ancestry.com. There is a blank place for other comments, but the way the survey is formatted, you don't know what the next page is going to be and it is easy to assume that there will eventually (after many pages of questions) be somewhere to provide feedback on the new look.
For those of us who choose not to post our tree on Ancestry, for whatever reason, many of the survey questions really don't apply.
that's my 2 cents : )
thanks Dick for providing a place to talk about this. : )

[Bill Hark]

Amelia hit it just right! I have the same issues. In addition, the "home page" picked for us is *NOT*; it is a cousin's family tree we visited a few years ago. We don't have access to it even though it is now "home." Ancestry seems to have trouble getting its site structure and customer interface right.

Let me also thank you for the forum. Ancestry makes it difficult.

[Jackie]

I was invited to view an ancestry tree by a person I'm helping, not even a relative. Now I have this unrelated tree (claiming to be mine) in my face every time I open Ancestry. It's irritating. They should let us format our own ancestry home page with the items we each want to come up every time we open. The New Hampshire television web site did this; so could Ancestry.

[Pat]

Ancestry has done a huge disservice to those of us who use it as a tool for research rather than to store our family tree. There is no menu or immediate access to the records needed: UK Census, US census, Vital or Immigration records without having Ancestry guide us using many steps. Just going back to recent searches won’t help when one jumps on Ancestry to solve a particular question and then gets out. Many times Ancestry’s search will result in numerous results that are so far off almost to be ridiculous and one has to go through extra steps to get to that point. In all the years I’ve had Ancestry, I believe this change will be my most frustrating to handle and most time consuming. Will it be worth the aggravation?

[barbgeni]

I too do not have my tree on Ancestry so the one taking up far to much space is someone who invited me to see their tree.

It says 'with less clicks' to get where you want to go - I think not! Before the links were all on the main page, one click and you were there, now it is hunt and peck and at least two clicks to get to census records. Bummer!

[Karen]

The new page page is just horrible. The results from a search is poorly laid out, and certainly not designed by anyone that uses it.

[Barbara]

Let's face it--Ancestry is all about collecting information. I agree with Amelia. I don't post any family information on ancestry yet my new home page lists all my recent search activity. It seems that the area that displays the family tree collection could be put to better use. I too do not like it in my face every time I sign on but guess it is just one of the major inconveniences that subscribers must put up with in order to use the site. Like it or not, Ancestry still provides a lot of information so I'll continue to use it and put up with each new improvement as well as the inconveniences. One of my biggest complaints is with the viewer-why don't they just update the viewer instead of subscribers having to download the updated one during every session?

[Ron]

I whole heartily agree with all the critical comments above. I have absolutely nothing positive to say about what Ancestry has done and I'm looking elsewhere for a place to conduct my research. The fact that they have constructed their feedback for comments in a way that you can't leave critical comments speaks volumes about their customer service. However, my biggest complaint has always been on their inability to limit the search results data. If your searching for someone who was born and died in the US you still have scroll through pages of foreign born (primarily the English census) search results. It is very frustrating and time consuming. I just figure its a way for them to exhibit their extensive holdings whether I want to see it or not. Either they have poor programming skills or they don't care.

[Joan]

At least they have an advertisement/link to Footnote.Com prominently placed on the screen. Otherwise, I'll wait a week or two before I pass judgement although I don't appreciate the way they are promoting the family tree portion of the website. It's lazy (among other things) genealogy.

[Mary]

It's awful. The "tree" displayed really has nothing to do with my genealogy and I would certainly prefer not to have to look at it each time I log on to the service. Besides, the Family Trees are not the most important part of Ancestry. If they were not there I would still belong.

[Jon]

Whoever designed this "improvement" should be fired for incompetence. The new home page is not user-friendly and the family tree that appears when I sign-on isn't even remotely related to me.

[Jim Bartlett]

For all of my online work, I have one MS Word document, with hyperlinks to the sites I visit (90% are genealogy, but it also includes banking, news, travel, weather, maps and other hobbies). I click on a link (like the Ancestry 1850 census) and it comes up (I did NOT get the new Ancestry homepage). One line on this page is
Census: 1810,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90,1900,10,20,30; SSDI - and each of these is a hyperlink to that page.
Yes, I could have this all in my favorites, but I arrange them much like www.refdesk.com, and it works for me. This one MS Word page is up all the time and provides an easy click to whatever I want.

[Lawrence H. "Larry" Head, Jr.]

In this forum I have consistently defended Ancestry "warts and all" because it has provided convenient access 24/7 to a large and ever-growing body of information. In spite of the transcribing/indexing flaws, Ancestry has saved me tons of time and money.

This time, however, I fully concur with the negative comments.

It appears to me that Ancestry's new homepage merely frustrates access to the databases. To me, that access is--was, rather--their redeeming feature, and the sole reason for my subscription.

[Jan Murphy]

If the elements on the home page could be re-arranged (or removed) to suit the user, as one can with a personalized Google page, this new design might be useful.

As it is now, I agree, for those of us interested in going straight to actual records rather than putting trees online, the new design is extremely annoying.

I usually bypass the home page entirely and go straight to the Card Catalog -- the url is
http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/alldblist.aspx

[Mary Buchholz in South Dakota]

Hopefully people like me find the new home page fine -- I use Ancestry every day -- I do have a Family Tree but I don't really use that part of Ancestry, but I think that Family Tree box is smaller than it was and less intrusive than the old one. As others have said Ancestry has the greatest set of sources we have ever had access to. I am enjoying my family history search more and more!! MaryinSD

[Sandra Mowery]

I absolutely hate it. I was so aggravated trying to navigate for research because I found it takes many more "clicks" to get where I want to be. My main objective at this time is not building a family tree, so please don't greet me with that large tree building box. If I have to spend additional time looking for stuff, it leaves me less time for research. Why can't they just leave a good thing alone!

[Alexa]

I do have several trees on Ancestry but I don't go to them when I go to Ancestry's home page. The main reason I go there is to search. The huge tree in our faces is just a waste of space. Often I look for links to Ancestry's sections of its database. Looks like they've moved "some" of the links on the search page. Where are the rest of the links?

Again, I don't need my trees in my face. For me, the most important part of Ancestry is its search box. I agree with the person who complained that Ancestry always lists dozens upon dozens of unrelated listings for a search. Really. It's better than it was in the early days, but why still so many "nowhere near" what we're searching for?

Thanks, Mr. Eastman, for making us aware of this.

[Pat in California]

As usual after Ancestry.com has made technical changes to their site my access to the site is impaired so badly that I am unable to log in using my usual username and password. I had this problem more than a month ago. It took numerous complaints from me and others to get them to acknowledge, then fix the underlying technical problems they had created. I was only able to re-access Ancestry.com last week and now, today, after they made their changes last night, I am again frozen out of the site. The problem, as I understand it, is that I do not access the site using MS Explorer, which does not interface well with my internet provider. And Ancestry.com does not support other browsers very well. So, I would very much like to see what the fuss is about, but again, Ancestry.com's less than competent technical support has made it impossible to even log in. I am not a happy customer and am not getting full value for my subscription. Surely I'm not alone.

[Phyllis in GA]

If you would like to delete the Family Tree info at the top of the page, click on "trees" to get a list of them. Then click the X to delete them.

[Elizabeth Smoot]

Maybe I've not noticed them before, but I hate having an ad on the right hand side, especially for something completely unrelated (today it is Sun Trust). I'm paying for the service, I don't want ads!

[Lois]

I was able to log in without a hitch using Mozilla Foxfire. No family tree impaired my view. I got to the search area by clicking on "Search" at the top of the page. I like the feature showing the latest databases. I agree that I should not have to have an ad blinking in bright distracting colour when I am a paying subscriber.

[Joan Parker]

Gee, do you think that the so-called "programmers" who created FTM2008 were fired and now work for Ancestry and created this mess?

What happened to: If it ain't broke, don't fix it?"

[Judy]

The new home page is the pits. I have the "advanced search" bookmarked and seldom go to the home page anyway. I hear that may be changing soon too (and not for the best I'm afraid).

[ellen]

I agree with every comment posted. Their revamping project must have been outsourced to a foreign country. Improvements? I don't think so.

[SJ Adams]

I also was not impressed with the new design.... I have seen better designed scholarly journals databases. I found the site difficult to use.

However in their defense, it is a good place to do research in many respects.

[Linda Lowrey]

The new home page is extremely annoying, frustrating and very time-consuming to navigate. It is not "user-friendly" at all. I have been an Ancestry subscriber for several years. Yesterday it took me hours just to find the sites I use on a daily basis. It's good to know others feel the same about all of this and the comments were very helpful.

[Barbara Brown Allen]

This new format is the absolute pits. I was completely happy with the old format; everything I wanted was right there when I signed on, and easy to navigate. What a nightmare it is now. And the new home page is ugly and uninviting. I could go on & on, but why?

[Peggy Sue Maupin]

I agree with all the comments. As a paying subscriber, why should we have this big box staring us in the face that has nothing to do with what we need to search.IT IS IN THE WAY. MOVE IT. And by merging all census records and voter's records together, how can you find a person living in U.S.Even in a web search,sometimes you have as many as 17 million names and you can not save in this search. I have also heard the customer is SUPPOSED TO BE RIGHT! WHY DON'T THESE PROGRAMMERS LISTEN TO THE CUSTOMER.Give us back a way to do a search without all this things.The whole thing is beginning to stink!

[Peggy Sue Maupin]

I agree with all the comments. As a paying subscriber, why should we have this big box staring us in the face that has nothing to do with what we need to search.IT IS IN THE WAY. MOVE IT. And by merging all census records and voter's records together, how can you find a person living in U.S.Even in a web search,sometimes you have as many as 17 million names and you can not save in this search. I have also heard the customer is SUPPOSED TO BE RIGHT! WHY DON'T THESE PROGRAMMERS LISTEN TO THE CUSTOMER.Give us back a way to do a search without all this things.The whole thing is beginning to stink!

[Mary]

That's what I get for not reading your newsletter for even one day! It was a real shocker to open the new and "improved" Ancestry.com yesterday and find pride of place given to a family tree that I had looked at a couple of times to help an online correspondent who's related to me about eight generations ago. Most of her historical data is from trolling the Internet and entered with no analysis or source citations; however, she updates daily with recent data from people I'm not related to and have zero interest in. Because of that, I'm always getting Ancestry e-mails and now "updated" on-screen info front and center for her tree. Thanks to Phyllis in GA, I got rid of the display of tree data - to be replaced by an invitation to upload my tree. Still a resounding NO to that, Ancestry.com! In fact, every time I remotely consider uploading my tree (and pull back because I know that I still have too many iffy pieces of data to verify/debunk), Ancestry manages to do something else to alienate serious researchers like me. OneGreatFamily.com redesigned their home screen, but it can be configured to suit the user or, what a concept!, one can simply click on Classic Home to get the old screen. That site's whole purpose is to gather family trees and link them, yet even OGF recognizes that some of us are just looking for clues. Thank you for providing a place to talk about this. Do you have any contacts at Ancestry.com that you can send these comments to??

[Barbara L. de Mare]

Ancestry seems to have forgotten that its purpose is to be a place to search for information, not to build trees. Most of us have separate programs for the tree-building. It appears that the major emphasis now is on collecting the information we supply to it, rather than what they provide for us. As someone else said, I have always defended Ancestry as it has so many great databases. However the problem mentioned above, i.e. that narrowing a search to a particular time and place is an exercise in futility as one still gets all sorts of information which does not fall within the requested parameters, rather than being corrected is getting increasingly annoying. There is no reason for this in the modern computer era.

[Ralph Bedwell]

I suspect they are just pushing the Family Tree thing because it is a way to get people to create large amounts of content for free (never mind that it is often inaccurate and rarely documented).

[Craig Hubbard]

Ancestry New Home Page Work Around

Following is a work around for those who use Internet Explorer (IE).

Navigate to the Ancestry database you wish to search, i.e. US census

Select Favorites > Add to Favorites

In Favorites > Links folder, create a new folder and name it Ancestry or whatever name you choose

Add the US census link to the folder Links > Ancestry

Continue adding direct links to your favorite search sites. Create additional folders in Links as you desire or just add the direct links to the Links folder. You may also rename these links to cause them to line up in the manner of your choosing.

Put your cursor in the IE tool bar and right click to turn on Links. This causes your Links folder to be displayed in the IE tool bar.

Folders in the Links folder will display as drop down lists, while other links line up across the tool bar.

If the number of links exceed the tool bar space, then >> appears on the right edge of the tool bar. Left click on >> to display a drop down list of your additional links in the Links folder.

Regards
Craig

[Amelia]

wow. I'm glad a lot of people feel the same way I do. It would be interesting to have an Ancestry.com person respond to some of these comments. We pay so much for the service, it would be nice to be listened to. I'm sure many of you are like me and have been using Ancestry for many years.
My personal work-around is by changing my Ancestry.com bookmark to their search page http://www.ancestry.com/search/
I don't want to delete my link to my cousin's tree because I do want to know when he updates it, I just don't need it to be in my way all the time.

[Ray Boutwell]

Let's not blame this on the programmers-it's entirely the responsibility of the marketing department. The home page needs to be designed for the ABSOLUTE beginner, without any knowledge of computers or genealogy. They can just start typing in a family tree and when they run out of info they will HAVE to join ancestry.com. It's all in pursuit of the god-awful dollar. But as Bobby Burns wrote a couple centuries ago and still true today, "The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray."

[Dennis]

You may be interested in the below, from the Ancestry Blog:

Follow-up on the New Ancestry.com Homepage

Posted: 03 Jul 2008 04:55 PM CDT

This is a follow-up to our previous post about our new homepage. Thanks again to everyone for their feedback on the updated logged-in homepage. We really want to make sure that the homepage is something that can be a real help to all of you. Here are some of the improvements we have planned based on your feedback:

New Search interface

Thanks to your feedback we identified a bug that is making it so that if you click on one of the content Quick Links on the homepage like “Birth, Marriage & Death Records” or “U.S. Census Records” you will get switched to our new Search experience if you weren’t already using it. This was not our intention. We hope to be able to fix those links within the next week or so to prevent this from happening.

If you like the new Search experience, you don’t need to do anything. If you have gotten switched to the new Search experience and prefer the old Search experience, just click on the Search tab and then click on the link near the top of the page called “Switch back to old search experience.” We’re sorry for any inconvenience this caused any of you.

Some additional links to commonly used content

Since everyone has different content that they’re interested in, we won’t be able to automatically put all of the links you want into the new Quick Links section. Based on feedback, though, there are a couple links that we think will help most members. First, we’ll be adding a link in the Quick Links section to go to the Ancestry Card Catalog where you can quickly find and search any database you are interested in. Second, we’ll be adding a link to the US Military Collection, as that is the most-used record collection that is not already listed in the Quick Links section.

We expect to add these new links in the next week or so. They will be added for everyone, so if you don’t want them in your Quick Links you can easily remove them by putting your mouse over the link and then clicking the trash can icon.

Making it easier to add the links you really care about

We know that for many of you the links that are initially included in the Quick Links do not cover everything that you want quick access to. Right now you can add a link to any page you want by clicking on the “Add a link” button and then pasting in the URL, but we recognize that is a bit of work. To make this easier we are going to be adding a link in the masthead at the top of each page that will let you add any page you are on to the Quick Links section of your homepage. So you will just need to go to one of your favorite pages once, and then you can add it to your Quick Links with one click. We hope to be able to add this feature within the next 2 weeks or so.

Quicker access to the Search box

While a large number of our members have online trees on Ancestry.com (over 5 million currently) and want quick access to their trees, some members who do not have an online tree on Ancestry.com have expressed the concern that the Trees box at the top of the homepage is making it harder to get to get to the Search box below it. We are working on a design that would allow these members to switch to a smaller version of the Tree box that takes less space. This should move the Search box up on the page and make it easier to access. We hope to be able to add this within the next 2 weeks or so.

Thanks for your patience as we work to make these improvements for you. We’re very glad that some of you are finding value in the new page already. We really hope that the updated homepage can help you take advantage of the Ancestry.com site and further your family history research.

[Nancy Possley]

Boy, am I glad that I read the above commens. I had recently been invited to join someone's family tree to check out her info and every since then, I've got this hugh family tree when I log back into Ancestry to check on something else. I thought it was just my system or something that I had clicked on in error that brought it up. Don't like that at all. I want the "OLD PAGE" back for easier moving about their site.
Nancy

[Nelda Percival]

I called my bank who gave me ancestry.com's phone number. I talked to staff, the new home page is there to stay so either find a way around it. Remove your trees(which didn't work for me, as I'm on as a guest of other peple's trees, God, I wish I wasn't.). You can look for a different provider... (Yea Right, who offers as much as Ancestry.com in one place.) or suck it up... Because it seems they are not listening to us the users or even thier techinal staff, who by the way I can't name, (cause he might get fired.) but doesn't like it either....

I posted here about this on the 3rd and mine wasn't posted because I used my hotmail address (Gotta be spam.yea right..duh!). so I'm using my ISP account today, Hopefully this will get posted this time.

I use the world wide membership, I pay monthly and although, that is around $400.00 a year. They aren't listen to my complaints either. If there was anything nearly as good as what they offer I would leave ancestry.com, but I'll just bypass the home page as it takes over 15 minutes to load on my dialup service. (Which by the way is the only service to my area in MO by any company!) I can't afford the new computer so satilite is out my old computer won't handle it....So because of the graphic heavy data and java script or what ever they used to make all the whistles and bells...I must bypass the home page....

Thanks for listening... It is more then Ancestry.com marketing has done!

Nelda Percival